Re: Bolshevism vs Menshevism?

[Adam Rose <adam@xxxxxxxx>]

>
> On Thu, 6 Jun 1996, Adam Rose wrote:
>
> >
> > >From this difference of perspective flowed the different methods of 
> > >organising.
> > It may not have been absolutely clear at the time, [ obviously, it wasn't to
> > Trotsky, who saw both parties as slow to react to the outbreak of revolution
> > in 1905, and when they did react, they BOTH took part in the workers 
> > uprising,
> > despite BOTH parties thinking that the revolution was a bourgeois one ]
> > but the two tendencies developed in different directions because one saw the
> > working class as the primary agent of change, and the other didn't.
> >
>
> Louis: A party that sees the "working class as the primary agent of
> change" is simply a party based on Marxism. When Lenin helped to create a
> party that acted on this principle, he wasn't inventing anything new. He
> was simply acting in a manner consonant with the constitutions of 2nd
> International parties. They, on the other, had abandoned this approach for
> reasons that obviously grew out of the bourgeoisification of Social
> Democratic parliamentarians and trade union officials. Lenin's
> revolutionary consistency has nothing to do with the "democratic
> centralism" of modern era "Leninist" sects.
>

I agree.

But . . . the Mensheviks also called themselves Marxists, even though
in fact they had moved away from the centrality of the working class.

Adam.



Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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